dsalo

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August 3, 2010
Looking for us? We're happy to say that we're part of the new Scientopia blogging collective. Come see us there!
July 13, 2010
Oh, if I'd only had this picture for Zombie Day... Credit for the photo to UK Serials Group. Credit for the alteration of the speech bubble (you can see the original slide here if you care to) to Steve Lawson. Incidentally, I should have a postprint of an article based on this presentation up…
July 8, 2010
Richard Wallis has taken my ribbing in good part, which I appreciate; his response is here and will reward your perusal. He also left a comment here, part of which I will make bold to reproduce: As to RDF underpinning the Linked Data Web - it is only as necessary as HTML was to the growth of the…
July 8, 2010
So, the PepsiCo blog thing. Right. Advance disclaimer: this is me talking, not either of my illustrious co-bloggers. We have not yet made a decision about what to do; one co-blogger is across the pond at a conference and the other is vacationing, so that discussion will have to wait a bit. This is…
July 6, 2010
Richard Wallis of Talis (a library-systems vendor) posted The Data Publishing Three-Step to the Talis blog recently. My reaction to this particular brand of reductionism is… shall we say, impolitic. I just want to pat Richard on the head and croon "Who's the clever boy, then? You are! Yes, you are…
July 1, 2010
I would be utterly remiss in my duties were I not to point out SciBling John Wilbanks's vitally important new open-access initiative. I pledge my full and free support. After all, my brain is basically purée anyway… (Apologies to those who saw this briefly yesterday. John jumped the, er, gun…
June 29, 2010
Much is murky in open access, but this at least is clear: academic libraries have committed different amounts of money and staff toward an open-access future, from a flat zero up to hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth. It's the zeroes and near-zeroes that concern me (why, hello there, Yale, and…
June 24, 2010
I am bursting with pride to introduce Sarah Shreeves and Elizabeth Brown as co-bloggers here on Book of Trogool! (You'll have to excuse me if I go over my exclamation-point quota. I'm just so excited about this!) I will let them tell you about themselves; I'll just say that Sarah works for the…
June 21, 2010
There is, in fact, more to life than the California vs. NPG battle royale. I know, I'm surprised too. It's funny because it's true! Daily Life in an Ivory Basement offers the NSF a data-management plan. Along those same lines, coping with data ranks high in worry factor in this OCLC report on…
June 15, 2010
Other people are doing NPG vs. CDL link roundups better than I am, so I'll limit myself to a few links: Think this is a one-off moment of insanity on NPG's part? Bernd-Christoph Kaemper demonstrates the pattern. Steve Lawson of Colorado College shares text of an email he sent to faculty at his…
June 11, 2010
Having inflicted at least one truly Bulwer-Lytton-contest-worthy metaphor on FriendFeed today ("The NPG/CDL thing isn't about open access; open access is just lurking there, kinda like a knife-wielding maniac in a horror movie"), I feel I must raise the stakes by linking to this Derangement and…
June 10, 2010
This morning, when Nature Publishing Group responded to the University of California library's broadside, I contemplated taking the response apart piece by piece in a bit of "... translated into English" satire. I'm glad I didn't have the chance. I'm much, much happier for people to read the…
June 9, 2010
So I'm turning over the California/NPG situation in my head, because I—okay, because I'm obsessive, are you happy now? (Just don't ask how late I was sending email last night.) The very cynical portion of my brain notes that it's almost certainly easier to persuade faculty to inaction than action.…
June 8, 2010
This is the sort of event I can never, ever manage to predict. Like the Harvard OA mandate. Or the PRISM Coalition. In brief, Nature Publishing Group tried the usual big-publisher contract-renewal tactics: jack the price a lot, because although librarians squeal, faculty never listen, so eventually…
June 8, 2010
I'm not a business analyst with my eye on the scholarly publishing industry, but if I were, I'd sound an awful lot like Claudio Aspesi being interviewed by Richard Poynder. I can't speak to Elsevier's internal organizational issues, but the rest of Aspesi's words ring true to me. Libraries have…
June 4, 2010
Another reason it's been quiet around here is that comments haven't been appearing. This was my fault (though I am innocent of any ill intent), and I apologize with all my heart. What happened was this: I was getting quite a bit of the particularly obnoxious kind of spam that copies other comments…
June 3, 2010
*blows off the dust* It's been quiet around here. Sorry about that. Morphing jobs is chaotic, as is moving offices. I've missed a writing deadline, made another, and have a third coming up. I don't have a proper desk in my new office yet (I will soon), and my current makeshift is making my good old…
May 28, 2010
This post is intended for Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt's crowdsourced Hacking the Academy book. Arguments about open access usually appeal to altruism, tradition, or economics. Even arguments supposedly aimed at researcher self-interest strike me as curiously abstract, devoid of useful example. I…
May 27, 2010
I'm on record predicting a toll-access journal bloodbath. Anecdotes are not data, one dead swallow doesn't mean the end of summer, and so on… but I just heard yesterday about a second small independent toll-access journal whose sponsors may be discussing winding it down. This isn't the scenario I…
May 17, 2010
I need to lift the iron curtain between this blog and my workplace. I beg your indulgence for one post. As those who read Bora's interview with me know, I discontinued my previous blog Caveat Lector because I was informed that it was causing significant distress to individuals in my workplace. In…
May 13, 2010
Did you miss the tidbits? I rather did. Data in climate science, and the problem of standardslessness: One database to rule them all, track global temperatures Congratulations to Duke, the latest open-access mandate success! Paolo Mangiafico, on Open Access at Duke University Not all governments…
May 12, 2010
Saying that large-scale storage is all that's necessary for data curation is like saying that empty bookshelves are all that's necessary for a library.
May 11, 2010
Word on the street is that the NSF is planning to ask all grant applicants to submit data-management plans, possibly (though not certainly) starting this fall. Fellow SciBlings the Reveres believe this heralds a new era of open data. I'm not so sanguine, at least not yet. Open data may be the…
May 4, 2010
Having made it back at last from Scotland despite the ash cloud, and overcome jetlag and (some) to-do list explosion, I finally have leisure to reflect a bit on UKSG 2010. My dominant takeaway is that nearly everyone in the scholarly-publishing ecosystem—publishers and librarians alike—is finally…
April 22, 2010
My husband and I have been stranded by the ash cloud from Iceland. We are well-housed thanks to good friends and the strength of weak ties, so there is no need to worry about us. With luck, we'll be able to get home Tuesday the 27th. Blogging will continue to be sporadic until we're home. I couldn'…
April 13, 2010
I'm just back from lunch, after giving my UKSG talk first thing this morning. Here are slides plus notes: Who owns our work? (notes) I'm aware that some of the notes are cut off owing to font size; I'll fix that as soon as I have a free minute. I also have slides only up, but this deck is a little…
April 8, 2010
I am off to bonnie Scotland tomorrow for the UK Serials Group conference. I'll also be jogging down to Bath to meet some of the fine people at UKOLN and talk data. There's a tremendous amount happening rather fast around serials at present; I wish I had time to blog it all, but I don't—I have a…
April 4, 2010
Dan Cohen has an extraordinarily worthwhile post recounting his talk at the Shape of Things to Come conference at Virginia (which I kept my eye on via Twitter; it looked like a good 'un). I see no point in rehashing his post; Dan knows whereof he speaks and expresses himself with a lucidity I can't…
April 1, 2010
Not good at organizing your thoughts, much less your research notes? Think publishing your data should be as easy as falling off the couch? Yes, well, me too. So I've built a new site to do it all for you, and I'm calling it Curatr. Built on all the shiniest and most proprietary technologies, from…
March 30, 2010
Tuesday seems a good day for tidbits. (I am head-down in my UKSG presentation and class stuff at the moment, so kindly forgive posting slowness.) One argument I rarely see made for open access that should perhaps be made more often is that it reduces friction in both accessing and providing…